


Best of You

by eerian_sadow



Series: Species Imperative [5]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: tf_speedwriting, Family, Gen, Other, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 00:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eerian_sadow/pseuds/eerian_sadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perceptor:  a character study in three parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best of You

_Sunstreaker_

He’s limping again, in that subtle way he does when he doesn’t want us to know that his hip joint is hurting him again. There’s nothing any of us on this base can do for it, since he’s our acting medic and you can’t exactly do major surgery on yourself, and he tries so hard not to let it make him a burden on the rest of us. He shouldn’t see himself that way, though. 

He’s the best mech here. He’s smart and he’s wise—and I don’t care what my idiot brother thinks, those two things are _not_ the same—and he cares so much about us, even though he didn’t create us and he wasn’t ever our guardian. And not just us, either. He loves everybody on the base, maybe even the whole planet, but he treats me and Sides like we’re family.

We’ve never had one of those before.

_Sideswipe_

Perceptor is pretending his hip joint isn’t all out of whack again, so I’m pretending I don’t see it. He’ll never complain about it, not on shift or off, but he won’t let us do anything about it unless we’re in his quarters either. He’s stubborn like that and I can respect it.

Sunny and I wouldn’t even be here if he wasn’t so stubborn. It’s probably his best trait, that he could out-stubborn a pair of street-raised war hatchlings for long enough that they could become a family. I don’t know what I would do without that.

And he’s so smart, even when he’s trying to talk at out level of understanding. There are some things we just don’t know yet, though. But he’s always so patient and explains everything. He makes us both feel like we’re more than pretty chassis and nice weaponry when he does that. He makes us feel like we’re smart, too.

_Prowl_

Perceptor’s shrapnel wound is bothering him again. It is obvious in the way he walks so stiffly and the number of experimental projects he allows his twins to fetch for him. It is an unspoken agreement between the three of them that they do not help with those projects at any other time, but he allows their assistance when he is in pain.

It is a measure of his trust for them, and it is a high one indeed. 

Before the twins’ arrival, there was no other mech on this base that he would trust with those projects. They have changed him in a fundamental way, brought him back toward the mech he was before Megatron ordered the destruction of the Science Academy and the Hall of Records. They have brought him out of a despair that I am not certain any of us realized he was in.

For their sake, I shall admonish him to go and see Ultra Magnus’ medic at Metroplex. They are, I believe, the one exploitable weakness he has that will finally make him go. I can only hope that it happens before his old injury becomes a liability.


End file.
